Coronavirus continues to delay Manteca’s Great Wolf Lodge opening; new fall date set
Long-anticipated as one of the largest tourist attractions to come to the Central Valley in years, Great Wolf Lodge again is delaying the opening of its new Manteca water park resort due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The massive 500-room hotel, indoor water park and family entertainment center being built just off of Highway 120 in Manteca was going to open with much fanfare (and even a month early) this summer. But the continued spike in COVID-19 infections in the valley and across the state have made finding a workable opening date a constantly moving target.
So now Great Wolf Resorts, the parent company for the chain of 18 indoor water park resorts, has pushed back the reopening to at least the end of October.
In a written statement, Great Wolf Resorts Director of Corporate Communications Jason Lasecki said new reservations for the Manteca resort will not be taken until after Oct. 28.
“With the timeline uncertain for government officials to lift business restrictions due to the pandemic, we have made the difficult decision to postpone the opening of Great Wolf Lodge Northern California,” he said in the statement. “An official opening date will be communicated once we receive clarity from government officials as to when they will allow family entertainment businesses like ours to reopen safely and responsibly.”
This is the fourth opening date the company has set for the resort — which will include a six-story hotel, attached 95,000-square-foot indoor water park and 45,000-square-foot family entertainment center. The grand opening was initially set for Aug. 1, but then due to ahead-of-schedule construction work in early March (before the global pandemic was felt across much of the country) the opening was moved up to July 1.
On March 15, the company closed all of its resorts across the country. They’ve been reopening locations since June 16 in other states. Its only other California site, in Anaheim, remains closed until at least Sept. 30, according to the company website.
At the start of June, as businesses were being reopened across the state, the Manteca resort’s opening date was pushed back to Sept. 1. Hiring for the some 590 positions needed to staff the enormous project began in late June. But hiring has now been paused, according to company spokeswoman Ally Brayton. She said once there is more clarity on the opening date, she expects it to resume and for additional positions to be added.
All construction work on the project has been completed, Brayton said. The Great Wolf Lodge project first broke ground in November 2018 after nearly a decade of on-again, off-again negotiations with the city of Manteca. The Central Valley city has a long history with waterslides, having been home to the popular Manteca Waterslides from 1974 to 2004.
Great Wolf’s Lasecki wrote in his statement that the new opening push back was “with the hopes a change in the current situation will allow us to open later this fall.”
Guests who had booked for stays based on its previous opening dates, and before Oct. 27, will be given full refunds or allowed to reschedule their stays at no cost. For more information visit www.greatwolf.com/northern-california.
This story was originally published August 11, 2020 at 2:00 PM with the headline "Coronavirus continues to delay Manteca’s Great Wolf Lodge opening; new fall date set."
